An appraisal of Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt’s global historical sociology

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willfried Spohn
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Critical Conversation

Shmuel N. Eisenstadt was one of the great sociologists of the second half of the twentieth century and a major visionary for the sociological challenges of the twenty-first century. As I claim, his overall work should be understood as a life-long critical conversation with the classical modernization paradigm from a heterodox and peripheral point of view — reflecting the Holocaust experience of European modernity as well as the precarious construction of a modern society in Israel. As such, his oeuvre can be viewed as an alternative, neo-Weberian synthesis of classical sociology to mainstream sociology. To demonstrate this claim, I firstly reconstruct Eisenstadt’s heterodox theory of modernity, emphasizing the tensions, contradictions and paradoxes of global modernity. Secondly, I highlight the contours of his comparative-civilizational, multiple modernities approach that has materialized in numerous path-breaking analyses of several civilizations — not only of Western but particularly of non-Western civilizational complexes. Thirdly, I emphasize the innovative research direction of his civilizational analysis for the new field of world history. Fourthly, I show also his innovative research direction in the recently growing area of the sociology of globalization and world society. Taken together, I see Shmuel Eisenstadt’s oeuvre as one of the great inspirations for a global historical sociology of the twenty-first century.

Reflecting the Nation: Costa Rican Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-180
Author(s):  
Liz Harvey-Kattou
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
San Jose ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Marginalised Groups ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The City

This chapter argues that cinema has been the primary creative vehicle to reflect on national – tico – identity in Costa Rica in the twenty-first century, and it begins with an overview of the industry. Considering the ways in which film is uniquely positioned to challenge social norms through the creation of affective narratives and through the visibility it can offer to otherwise marginalised groups, this chapter analyses four films by key directors. Beginning with an exploration of Esteban Ramírez’s Gestación, it considers youth culture, gender, and class as non-normative spaces in the city of San José. Similarly, Jurgen Ureña’s Abrázame como antes is then discussed from the point of view of its ground-breaking portrayal of trans women in the capital. Two films shot at the geographic margins of the nation are then discussed, with the uncanny coastline the focus of Paz Fábrega’s Agua fría de mar and the marginalized Afro-Costa Rican province of Limón the focus of Patricia Velásquez’s Dos aguas.

Towards Realizing Twenty-First Century Skills

2020 ◽  
pp. 1243-1261
Author(s):  
Geraldine Torrisi-Steele
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
University Graduates ◽  
Effective Learning ◽  
Learning Capabilities ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century Skills

Metacognitive capabilities are the core of the “soft skills” we have come to know as twenty-first century skills. However, there is good evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, that metacognitive capabilities are not well developed even in university graduates. Given the recognition of the necessity of such skills in enabling full participation of individuals in modern society, and in enabling humankind as a whole to continue to move forward in positive ways, the need to better nurture the development of metacognitive capabilities is pressing. The massification of education and the widening participation of people in higher education means that formal education can more greatly influence and shape people's learning capabilities. Given appropriate instructional design of experiences, education has thus great potential for setting people up to continue effective learning throughout their lifespan. Developing metacognition requires designing instructional experiences targeting not only discipline requirements but also deliberately scaffolding the development of metacognitive capabilities as an integral component of the discipline.

scholarly journals The Humanities as Contradiction: Against the New Enclosures

Humanities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Christopher Breu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
Dialectical Tension ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Twenty First Century

This essay begins by surveying our current moment in the humanities, diagnosing the language of crisis that frames much of the discourse about them. It argues that the crisis is a manufactured economic one not a symbolic one. The problems with many recent proposals—such as the new aestheticism, surface reading, and postcritique—is that they attempt to solve an economic crisis on the level of symbolic capital. They try to save the humanities by redisciplining them and making them mirror various forms amateur inquiry. I describe these approaches as the new enclosures, attempts at returning the humanities to disciplinarity with the hopes that administrative and neoliberal forces will find what we do more palatable. Instead of attempting to appease such forces by being pliant and apolitical, we need a new workerist militancy (daring to be “bad workers” from the point of view of neoliberal managerial rhetorics) to combat the economic crisis produced by neoliberalism. Meanwhile, on the level of knowledge production, the humanities need to resist the demand to shrink the scope of their inquiry to the disciplinary. The humanities, at their best, have been interdisciplinary. They have foregrounded both the subject of the human and all the complex forces that shape, limit, and exist in relationship and contradiction with the human. The essay concludes by arguing that the humanities, to resist neoliberal symbolic logics, need to embrace both a critical humanism, and the crucial challenges to this humanism that go by the name of antihumanism and posthumanism. It is only by putting these three discourses in negative dialectical tension with each other that we can begin to imagine a reinvigorated humanities that can address the challenges of the twenty-first century.

On the noises and rhythms of translation

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
M.Carmen África Vidal Claramonte
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Global Society ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Twenty First Century

In the global society of the twenty-first century, language plays a fundamental role that is neither neutral nor innocent. The meaning of every word is never pure, but it is charged with many different noises and rhythms according to the culture in which they originate. As a result, the most important and also the most difficult and compromising function of translators, from an ethical viewpoint, is not translating meaning, but translating those noises and rhythms implicit in texts. That is why I believe we have to rethink the concept of translation from a new point of view. What I propose in this article is an interdisciplinary approach, derived from music and philosophy, and specifically from Michel Serres’ and Jacques Attali’s concept of noise, John Cage’s concept of silence and Henri Lefebvre’s concept of rhythmanalysis, that will allow us, as translators, to become more aware of the ideologies that filter in through the noises and rhythms of words. This article will examine examples of these ideas found in literary texts.

Neologisms

2018 ◽  
pp. 193-204
Author(s):  
Joel West
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Words ◽  
Know How ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Peircean Semiotics

While people use language to let others know how and what it is that we think, language is also the means by, and also the substrate within which, humans think. This chapter explores the use of language as the basis for cognition, based on both a chosen word's denotative meaning and also its rhetorical (metaphorical) connotative meanings. The artificial dichotomy between language and speech is deconstructed. Peircean semiotics is used to argue that language is indexical in its primary referential functions, including sociolinguistic functions. Three new words, all of which were coined in the twenty-first century, are examined from a sociolinguistic and a semiotic point of view.

One Point of View: Passports to Opportunity

1986 ◽  
Vol 33 (9) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
B. Ross Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Elementary School Students ◽  
Information Society ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
School Students ◽  
Education Today ◽  
Twenty First Century

We are preparing today's elementary school students to live in the information society of the twenty-first century. In that society, whether one is a “have” or a “have not” will be determined largely by one' s education; the ability to do mathematics and solve problems will be essential. Today we have dramatic racial inequities in employment and income. We also have great disparities by race in students' achievement and participation in mathematics. To reduce the inequities in society tomorrow, we must address the disparitie in mathematics today. In my opinion, this challenge is the major issue in mathematics education today.

scholarly journals Writing in the Twenty-First Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1265-1267
Author(s):  
Cristina Guarneri
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Traditional Classroom ◽  
First Century ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Writing Students ◽  
Teaching Point ◽  
Twenty First Century

Writing is one of the most important courses to take within higher education in the twenty-first century, especially when aligning education that will meet individual career goals. According to the Nation's Report Card on Writing, in 2011 alone, only about a quarter of young people can write proficiently. There is a need to institute change to developing and increasing the amount and quality of writing students are expected to produce. There is a need for greater collaboration for student learning by using innovative pedagogies that maintain the complexity and importance of pioneering work while showing that it is, in some cases, negotiable with traditional classroom practices. There are three specific examples: teaching point of view with multicultural studies, incorporating language awareness/critical theory into the composting process, and considering prescriptive suggestions in the workshop. Discussions of large-scale structural change should and will continue, but this article—which reviews how some theorists situate and enact innovation, include narratives of student resistance, and discuss practices that reframe more traditional activities—invites instructors to reflect on recent scholarship and consider larger educational goals for their classrooms.

scholarly journals The Earth as Pinprick: Some Early Western Challenges to Anthropocentrism // La Tierra como punta de alfiler: Algunos desafíos tempranos al antropocentrismo en occidente

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-175
Author(s):  
Bryan Moore
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Twenty First Century

      It is common to assume that the ancient Greeks and Romans were essentially anthropocentric in point of view. While this is partly true (as it is today), the ancients established important precedents that challenge and overturn this view, anticipating modern science and even Darwin and beyond. This article analyzes texts from the Presocratics to late antiquity to show how the questioning of anthropocentrism developed over roughly 800 years. This matters because overcoming our present ecological crises demands that we reassess our place on the earth and draw down our impact on the planet. The ancients show that the questioning of anthropocentrism it nothing new; their work is part of the bridge required to help us move more responsibly into the later parts of the twenty-first century and beyond. Resumen        Es común asumir que los griegos y romanos antiguos tenían un punto de vista esencialmente antropocéntrico. Aunque esto es cierto en parte (como hoy en día), los antiguos establecieron precedentes importantes que desafían y dan la vuelta a esta perspectiva, anticipándose a la ciencia moderna e incluso a Darwin y más allá. Este artículo analiza textos desde los Presocráticos hasta la antigüedad tardía para mostrar cómo se cuestionó el antropocentrismo durante aproximadamente 800 años. Esto es importante porque para vencer las crisis ecológicas actuales es necesario que re-evaluemos nuestro lugar en la tierra y que reduzcamos nuestro impacto en el planeta. Los antiguos demuestran que cuestionarse el antropocentrismo no es nada nuevo; su trabajo es parte del puente necesario para ayudarnos a trasladarnos más responsablemente hacia el último periodo del siglo XXI y más allá.

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